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Senate Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2012 Contains Earmarks and Continued Funding for an Unnecessary and Expensive Program

David Williams

September 27, 2011

As the first group to uncover NASA earmarks in the 2011 Continuing Resolution for fiscal year (FY) 2011 and earmarks in the FY 2012 House Defense Appropriations Bill, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has found more earmarks, this time in the FY 2012 Senate Defense Appropriations Bill. TPA has preliminarily found 62 earmarks worth $2.8 billion. In addition, the Senate also funded the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS). In addition to the other problems with MEADS (click here and here), according to language in the Senate bill, “The Committee is concerned with the historical management of the MEADS program and that it has taken the Department 3 years, following the 2008 program Preliminary Design Review, to conclude that with a production delay of at least 4 years and a U.S. investment of $1,160,000,000 required in addition to the $804,000,000 budgeted in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the program was simply unaffordable. As such, the Committee echoes the concerns voiced in section 807 of S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012, as reported.” The Senate Defense Appropriations Bill is funding unrequested earmarks and a project (MEADS) that the committee is concerned about. Not a smart way to fund the Department of Defense.

The projects listed below are in order as they appear in the Senate appropriations bill: